Today, data centers are comprised of hardware that serves up memory, Central Processor Unit (CPU), storage, and other resources for applications to utilize. These resources are often pooled together and used for virtualized environments, where virtual machines (VMS) can be orchestrated to run workloads on any machine whenever needed. This has become a key foundation of cloud management, which allows capacity to be increased or decreased easily in the data center for customers that do not wish to manage the details of the hardware.
The challenge that exists is that business users do not want (or need) to know the details of the hardware in the data center, the operating system, or hypervisors being used, yet they still would like to know information about those assets as it relates to the business. For example, users often need to know how much capacity they have available or how many resources they have consumed. There needs to be an easy way to map system-specific capacity information that resides on various devices scattered throughout the data center into high-level business views that users can understand. This concept can apply to not only just capacity metrics, but also performance, health, and metering data, as well, in the enterprise.
In virtualized cloud environments within data centers, many companies are now employing a new technology called “Resource Pools.” A resource pool allows one to aggregate all of the hardware resources of multiple dusters and/or standalone hosts into one logical view of hardware capacity that is available for client to use. This also allows administrators to more easily add, remove, and reorganize the allocation of resources.